first because all the replies that sprang to mind weren’t very complimentary. And because he was so near that she could feel the power of his masculinity emanating from him, smell the faint hint of his animal scent beneath the lingering traces of his cologne.
‘Tough. Determined. Implacable.’ Her mouth pulled slightly as she finished reeling them off.
He made another self-deprecating sound down his nostrils as he angled his body towards her, his forearm resting on the still warm stone. ‘Why do I get the impression that those adjectives were carefully chosen from the best of a bad bunch?’
Because they were, she thought, but remained silent this time.
‘You also thought I was grossly unscrupulous in being party to some treacherous and probably very unlawful act against your father,’ he stated, straightening up, ‘but I want you to know categorically now that I wasn’t.’
Strangely, she believed him, Rayne realised, shocked. But there was no room for anything other than truth in the deep intensity of his voice, nor, she accepted with a pulse-quickening heat stealing through her as she brought her head up, in the disturbing clarity of his eyes.
‘And Mitch?’ She looked quickly seaward to avoid his penetrating gaze, fixing hers on the light-spangled silhouette of a cruise ship moored way out in the distant harbour. ‘Did you tell him who I was?’
Her voice was infused with resentment, King noted. Something she had held against Mitch—against him—for years. ‘He knows who you are,’ he disclosed.
‘And what did he say?’ She looked up at him again now, her lovely face pained and accusing. ‘Did he admit that MiracleMed was Dad’s? And that he snatched it from under his nose?’
King took a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t quite like that, Lorri.’
‘No?’ Her head was tilted in rebellious challenge and her hair was as fiery as the Monte Carlo sunset. ‘How was it?’ she bitterly invited him to tell her.
King glanced away, way down across the scintillating Principality, watching a stream of red tail lights form a blur of colour along the highway following the curve of the coast.
This day had wreaked havoc on him, if any day could. First finding out that Rayne was Lorri Hardwicke. Then Mitch’s suspected heart attack. And, to add to all that, those soul-sinking moments at the clinic when he’d believed his father was the worst kind of criminal. But Mitch’s sin had been a moral one, rather than anything illegal. Even so, it still offended King’s sense of propriety to realise that Grant Hardwicke had been treated so unfairly. And it wasn’t going to be easy telling his daughter the truth when, either way, she wasn’t going to want to hear the answer.
‘Your father signed an agreement with Mitch just after they went into partnership together, to the effect that any work done for the company while they were directors of the company would be to the benefit of the company. I know. I’ve read the clause in that agreement. I had my secretary email it through to me today. Your father was the technical whiz-kid, but was lax when it came to business dealings or keeping vital records. If he hadn’t been, he would have registered his right in that software prior to signing that agreement, but he didn’t, which was a pity,’ he said, sounding as though he meant it. ‘And much to his cost, as it turned out.’
‘And that’s it?’ she queried in protest. ‘He signed his rights away and it’s a pity! Why? Because it made Claybornes so much money!’
‘Lorrayne, stop,’ King advised gently, understanding her pain, her justified anger and bitterness. He wished he hadn’t learned from Mitch today that he could have acknowledged the other man’s concept of that software and that he had chosen not to. It had been an act of vengeance against a man who had been his friend and whom he had wound up hating. ‘No one could have quite foreseen the impact that MiracleMed would make after it was launched.’
‘But it did!’ she complained. ‘And Dad never received any credit for it!’
‘And, believe me, no one regrets that more than I do,’ King said somberly.
He didn’t add that, for what it was worth, Mitch now regretted it too. That would be like openly admitting his father’s wrongdoing, and if Mitch wanted to apologise to her then it was up to Mitch to do it himself.
He didn’t know why his father had suddenly burdened him with this today, unless it was because he’d feared he was going to die and wanted to get it off his chest. But at least he could understand now why his father had become so bitter, and how shouldering such a weight of remorse could have contributed to making him ill.
‘OK. So there’s nothing I can do about it now,’ she accepted grudgingly, ‘because it was all signed, sealed and delivered legally! But that doesn’t alter the fact that your father came by that software immorally and very conveniently, after that quarrel he obviously instigated, which made Dad walk out. And I know it wasn’t Dad’s fault, because Dad never quarrelled with anyone!’
‘For heaven’s sake, Lorri, stop being so naïve!’
‘Naïve?’ She gave a brittle little laugh. ‘You think I don’t know my own father?’
‘Apparently not.’
She sent a sidelong glance up at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she bit out with her eyes narrowing.
‘It means that, much as I believe my father exercised his rights under that agreement—whether ethically or otherwise—I also believe that it’s time you, my misinformed little kitten, heard a few home truths about what really broke up their partnership.’
‘I already know that,’ Rayne tossed back assuredly. ‘It was professional jealousy. He knew what Dad had created was going to be worth a fortune and he wanted to reap all the rewards for it himself!’ She couldn’t believe she was saying things like this about Mitch Clayborne. The man who had taken her in. Offered her food and shelter and a safe haven to get her affairs sorted out when she’d found herself virtually stranded so far from home.
‘Jealousy, maybe. But not so much professional as deeply personal, I imagine,’ King was saying with a grim cast to his features. ‘My father quarrelled with yours because of the affair Grant was having with Mitch’s wife.’
‘You’re lying!’ She couldn’t believe King could dream up something so despicable.
‘Am I? Then why do you think there were never any proper claims made by your father to try and secure the rights to his software?’
‘Because you threatened him! I was there when you did it!’ she reminded him passionately.
‘And you think that was enough to stop him pursuing any claim against the company if he thought he could have, unless he hadn’t something to hide?’
She wanted to protest, but his words rang with something so akin to the truth that they left her speechless. There were times when she had wondered why her father hadn’t fought harder to try and get the rights to MiracleMed into his name. Sometimes she had begged him to, but he hadn’t, and she’d thought it was because he just hadn’t had any fight left in him.
‘I came round that night—rightly or wrongly—to tell him to stay away from my father. I had very little else on my mind except that my stepmother had been killed and that Mitch was more than likely to be in a wheelchair
